Monday, October 25, 2010

The Poetry of the Body: Yoga, Whitman, and American Tantra

Note: This post was originally published at Elephant Journal as 'Yoga, Spirituality, and the Body: Walt Whitman and American Tantra."

Walt Whitman, 1855

Although the method of yoga I practice never uses the term “Tantra,” I’ve long been intrigued by those that do.

Some of my Anusara friends casually refer to themselves as “Tantrikas,” and I love the sound of it: mysterious and exotic, kinda sexy and a more than a little bit edgy.

But the scholar in me always wants to know more: What does this evocative word really mean?

I’ve been thinking about this for awhile, and reading about it on and off. Finally, I’ve come to my own, at least preliminary conclusion, which is that Tantra (speaking strictly as it’s used in the North American yoga community today) has much more to do with Walt Whitman than with Indian tradition.

That’s not to say that there’s absolutely no connection between the two. Whatever linkage there may be between Tantra in its contemporary, North American and traditional, Indian contexts, however, exists more in the realm of the mystical and the poetic than the concrete. That’s OK, though – no, it’s really much more than OK; it’s intriguing, even fascinating. Certainly, it’s where the mystery resides.

Samuel – a British scholar who studies really interesting stuff like “Tibetan yogic health practices” – argues that Tantra can be traced back to a “relatively coherent set of techniques” developed in India during the 9th-10th centuries C.E. During this formative medieval period, its “key elements” included:

Use of transgressive “Kapalika”-style practices associated with cremation grounds and polluting substances linked to sex and death, and

“Internal” yogic practices, including sexual techniques, intended to achieve health and long life, as well as liberating insight.

“Tantric ritual,” Samuels explains, “is about powerful and dangerous forces, which must be encountered and dealt with for the good of the community. These forces can only be manipulated by specialist priests and ritualists, and even then there is still a risk that things can ‘go wrong.’” As such, Tantra has always been controversial: Many wondered “whether these practices were legitimate and appropriate, which is perhaps hardly surprising, because their position on or beyond the edge of the legitimate was intrinsic to their power.”

Hmmm. Not sounding that much like “Tantric philosophy of intrinsic goodness” described on the Anusara Yoga website, which naturally makes practitioners “nicer and more considerate” now, is it?

“Liberation is possible in the world”

Certainly, contemporary yoga teachers working with Tantra aren’t trafficking in trangressive techniques involving sex and death, or even (as far as I know) “elaborate deity visualizations.” So what are they doing?

While there’s no simple, single answer to this question, Nora Issacs identifies “non-dualism” as the “one core aspect” of Tantra consistently taught in the West. As explained in her recent Yoga Journal article, this boils down to the belief that “one’s true essence (alternatively known as the transcendental Self, pure awareness, or the Divine) exists in every particle of the universe”:

‘In Tantra, the world is not something to escape from or overcome, but rather, even the mundane or seemingly negative events in day-to-day life are actually beautiful and auspicious,’ says Pure Yoga founder Rod Stryker, a teacher in the Tantric tradition of Sri Vidya. “Rather than looking for samadhi, or liberation from the world, Tantra teaches that liberation is possible in the world.’

In keeping with non-dualism, contemporary Tantra stresses a strongly positive view of the body as a “manifestation of spirit” and potential vehicle for liberation. “’As soon as you like your body, it’s pretty much Tantric,’” Issacs quotes Anusara founder John Friend as saying. “You see the beauty and the Divine in it.’”

So what’s not Tantric?

As someone who’s been around the yoga community for years, this non-dualist, pro-body, this-worldly orientation feels very familiar. So familiar, in fact, that it pretty much describes all the schools of yoga that I’ve ever been exposed to – including ones, such as Iyengar, that claim nothing to do with the “Tantric” label whatsoever.

Anusara yoga is based on Shiva-Shakti Tantric philosophy, while Iyengar yoga is based essentially on Classical Yoga (Patanjali Yoga Sutra). Tantra focuses on removing the differences between the world and Spirit, while Classical Yoga tries to separate Spirit and the world.

Undoubtedly, as neither an Anusara or Iyengar practitioner (although I have done a reasonable amount of the latter), I’m getting in over my head here (and fear getting slammed by irate commentators). But, really? That doesn’t square with my experience of studying with several certified Iyengar teachers or reading books by Mr. Iyengar himself.

If you say you are your body, you are wrong. If you say you are not your body, you are also wrong. The truth is that although the body is born, lives, and dies, you cannot catch a glimpse of the divine except through the body.

I could give many other examples. But the point is: Can you honestly characterize any of the popular forms of yoga today as anti-body? As wanting to separate the body from spirituality? Sure, there’s a lot of “fitness yoga” that’s not interested in the spiritual side of yoga at all. But all other methods seem to have a positive orientation to the body, and to embodying spirituality in the world.

Anusara Yoga class (www.toddboston.com/Blog)

In other words, it seems to me that all of forms of yoga today (bracketing the purely fitness-oriented ones) are essentially “Tantric,” at least given the YJ definition of the term (which seems to capture the common sensibility of the North American yoga community pretty well). Yet, only particular methods, such as Anusara, describe themselves that way. Either I’m missing something here, or “Tantra” (again, speaking of it only as it’s used in the N.A. yoga community) really means something different.

The Poetry of the Body

So what is it?

It’s tempting to dismiss talk of “Tantra” as simply a marketing gimmick. But I’m not going to. Having taken a teacher training with Shiva Rea several years ago, I’ve drunk some of that (American) Tantric Kool-Aid. There was something identifiably different in that experience, which I at least felt connected to Shiva’s references to Tantra.

Now, I’m only speculating. But based on my experience, what felt identifiably “Tantric” had nothing to do with abstract theories of dualism versus non-dualism. Rather, it was practicing in a way that brought us into what might be described as the “ecstatic realm.” It’s asana worked in a way that catches a ride on a vibrant wave of joy, connection, and liberation – right in this sweat-soaked room, right on this rubber mat, right in the here and now.

I did a little online reading, and found that some of the ancient Tantric texts captured the feeling I had experienced quite well. From the Spanda Karika:

when the Tantrika becomes established in the sacred tremor of reality, he liberates the flow of manifestation and return, and in this way takes pleasure in the universal freedom, as a master of the wheel of energies.

Contemplate over the undivided forms of your own body and those of the entire universe as being of an identical nature. Thus will your omnipresent being and your own form rest in unity and you will reach the very nature of consciousness . . . Feel your substance: bone, flesh and blood, saturated with cosmic essence, and know supreme bliss.

Still, based on what I’ve read about the history of Indian Tantra, I’m strongly inclined to agree with Baba Rampuri’s recent insistence that “Yoga, as practiced in the West, has nothing to do with Tantra as it is practiced in its high and low forms in India.”

The fact that I found some passages in ancient texts that spoke to me, in other words, isn’t enough to convince me that what we refer to as “Tantra” today has much to do with ancient (or even contemporary) Tantric practices in India.

Illustration from 1940 edition of Whitman's Leaves of Grass

Singing the Body Electric

On the other hand, I think that it has a lot to do with Walt Whitman.

While I’m interested in ancient Tantric texts, I’m even more fascinated by how my experience of ecstatic yoga maps onto his poetry: a man who was, after all, a visionary, mystic, and shaman of my own culture – someone whose energy I still feel resonating (although not nearly as much as I would like) in America today.

3 comments:

For those who didn't see it there, this article was a huge hit on Elephant, generating over 1200 views and a great discussion. This is a great response for any article, but particularly for a debut appearance.